Mugging

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will call a conference of those concerned with the administration of the law to discuss possible changes in the law to deal with offences of violence, particularly of the type known as mugging.

The law on offences against the person is already under review by the Criminal Law Revision Committee. Persons convicted on indictment of robbery or assault with intent to rob are now liable to imprisonment for life. Moreover, I have already asked chief officers of police for information about offences of this kind and measures taken to deal with them.

For these reasons I do not consider that such a conference is necessary.

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will extend the terms of his inquiry into the offences of robbery, known colloquially as mugging, to include other forms of organised violence against the person including assaults occasioning actual and grievous bodily harm, rape and attempted rape.

I have asked chief officers of police to collect and report to me factual information about the incidence in their areas of the offences colloquially
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called mugging. I do not think it necessary to make similar inquiries into other offences because more precise information about them is already available.